﻿﻿Sony PlayStation - Bend Studio﻿﻿Technical Game Designer

In the Spring of 2015 I moved to Bend Oregon where I began work as an intern at Sony PlayStation's Bend Studio. I am now a Technical Game Designer primarily responsible for the design, implementation and tuning of both our guns and motorcycles. I also built the groundwork for our melee weapons and special weapons such as various traps and grenades.

In addition to my systems design responsibilities I have worked closely with the AI, Mission and Open World teams to implement and refine our pipeline for populating enemies, outfitting them with proper weapons and tuning their behaviors. I have also worked on a number of missions and regularly support our UI team with various technical needs.

I was lucky enough to start working at Bend Studio fairly early in the project which has allowed me to be part of the prototyping, production and polishing phases. I began my internship by experimenting with our weapon systems and building missions. After three months I was offered a position as an Associate Technical Game Designer where I fleshed out existing weapons as well as expanded on them, both on the design and the underlying technical structure. This included all our standard guns such as various pistols and assault rifles but also building special weapons such as our crossbow.

Bend Studio was a fairly small studio when I began working there which allowed me to take on responsibilities someone with my work experience might not normally be given. I consider myself very lucky to have gained significant experience not just working on the design of these systems but leading their implementation by coordinating with the design leads and other teams to schedule, review and iterate.

Days Gone is built in a modified version of Unreal Engine 4 where I use both Blueprints and C++ daily, working closely alongside our programming team to build our weapons and gameplay systems.

Working at Bend Studio on Days Gone has been an extremely rewarding experience of which I am very proud.

RelicDigiPen Student ProjectLead Designer / Associate Producer

Relic is a 3D traversal based adventure platformer. It was built by a team of 25 DigiPen students from the Game Design, Art, Programming and Sound Design departments. It was built using DigiPens in-house Zero Engine. At the 2015 DigiPen Annual Awards it won 1st place for Best Spoken Dialogue and Best Characters, 2nd place for Game of the Year, Best Senior Game, Best Music and Best Sound Design. It also won 3rd place for Best 3D Visual Design.

I was the Lead Designer as well as Associate Producer on the project. As a Designer I did a lot of the level design. I was also an integral part of developing the systems. At the beginning of the semester we went through a prototyping phase during which I built numerous prototypes experimenting with various traversal mechanics.

As the Lead Designer, I was responsible for facilitating the inner workings of the Design Team. I organized and ran meetings, coordinated team members tasks and helped mitigate any issues that came up and generally assisted the Design Team in any way I could.

As the Associate Producer I did a lot of work with all members of the entire team. My most common jobs included facilitating communication, identifying areas of improvement and coordinating solutions, answering questions, organizing and running meetings and much more.

I poured a lot of myself into this project and could not have been happier with the outcome.